Processing lines for articles such as fruit often require different articles to be separated. This is an important commercial function, which may be used for example, to distinguish fruit destined for export and fruit destined for the local market. Manual grading of articles is costly, slow and prone to inaccuracies. Thus, automated methods and apparatus for grading articles have been developed. Known sorters can grade and sort produce by weight, color, blemish, dimensions, shape, density, internal quality, etc.
Article carriers are used to transport articles such as fruit through various stages for grading purposes, and to eject fruit at a required location dependent on the result of the grading process. The use of one or more video cameras is one known method of automatically sensing characteristics of articles. The article carriers typically include an endless circuit of cups on a conveyor chain with the cup situated to unload fruit at one of a plurality of stations. Each cup is usually arranged to carry a single article in order to enable sensing of the individual articles. In order to deliver a single article to each cup or carrier partition, a singulation process is required which receives randomly located articles across a relatively large area, and effectively funnels these into a single line of articles. A tapering chute and/or v-belt may be used for this function. However such arrangements can result in impacts and chaffing which damage delicate articles such as fruit. Such impacts and chaffing may occur between an article and surfaces of the singulation apparatus as well as with other articles. These problems are magnified when efficient high speed apparatus are utilized.
Throughout this specification, any reference to items of prior art is in no way to be deemed as an admission that such prior art constitutes part of the common general knowledge.